


Stand on Guard for Thee

by elegantstupidity



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Giant Robots, M/M, Noncanonical Geography, Sloppy Makeouts, The Northwest Passage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 00:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19074208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elegantstupidity/pseuds/elegantstupidity
Summary: Not everyone can be a rockstar of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. Even the elite Rangers need backup now and again.Which is exactly where the Schitt's Creek Shatterdome comes into play.





	Stand on Guard for Thee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gloss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/gifts).



> Let's all pretend that Schitt's Creek really is on the southern shore of Hudson Bay and not in the middle of rural Ontario. While we're at it, we can pretend David would ever give up his sweater collection, even for the good of humanity.

Perhaps the Rose siblings were not natural fits for Jaeger Academy cadets, but after their mother’s turn as Dr. Clara Mandrake in the unauthorized (in fact, the PPDC filed several motions against the production company to halt its release) Lifetime movie _The Kaiju Have Eyes III: The Rifting_ , It seemed as good a choice as anything else they could be doing. And, sure, they graduated with the “minimum acceptable performance reviews,” but that hardly mattered when they were shipped off to the ass end of nowhere to guard against any kaiju interested in taking the Polar Bear Plunge.

(Not, of course, that there were many polar bears left in the Arctic.)

So, no. It was impossible to say that David and Alexis Rose made for natural Jaeger pilots, but they were what the Schitt's Creek Shatterdome had, and they were nothing if not professional.

Most of the time.

“Ew, David!” Alexis groaned the minute they were out of the Drift. Her brother’s memories still curled around her, tangling with hers until it was hard to tell where she ended and he began. She pulled off her helmet and immediately shook her head. The connection didn’t disappear, but that was no reason to put up with helmet hair. “I did not need to see yours and Sebastien’s sloppy mouths all shoved together like that. I mean, last week during our maintenance run, I had to find out that mom’s present for my Sweet Sixteen was regifted, and now this? Also, you totally told me that you were ‘staying in’ that night!”

David stared at her, sure he could throw some disturbing shared memories of his own into the mix—hello, that summer she spent in Bangkok—but more interested in defending himself.

“First of all," he said, eyebrows climbing his forehead, "I did stay in that night. Just not _in_ my bunk.”

Stevie, removing David’s Drivesuit, snorted. David elbowed her. Well, he tried. Tethered as he was to the neural interface, he didn't have the range of motion necessary to land a hit on the J-Tech. And since she probably wouldn’t release him until he stopped trying, he subsided sulkily.

“Second,” he added as Stevie finally loosed his arm and he was free to gesticulate, “she regifted you something that _I_ gave her. You were not the victim in that scenario.”

“Please,” Alexis scoffed, standing perfectly still for Stevie—who didn't make so much as a peep, though her mouth was quirked ironically to the side—as she disconnected the spinal clamp. “Like any sixteen-year-old doesn’t already have a mink coat."

"How is that my fault?" he demanded.

She sniffed. "It wasn’t even new, David.”

“It was vintage!” Taking a deep breath to rein in his mounting frustration—after God knew how many drifts, maybe he should've been used to this—David finally stepped out of his terminal and back onto grated ground of the Drift Simulator Unit. He refused to rehash this with her again. Instead, he focused on the most important aspect of her complaint: “Last, my mouth is not, nor has it ever been, sloppy.”

“Am I interrupting something?”

All three turned, Stevie just a second out of sync with the siblings, to look at the door.

Standing there was a strange man. No one so strange as some of the characters that populated the Shatterdome, but unfamiliar nonetheless. There wasn't much distinctive about him, but for a United Nations lapel pin on his unfortunately pedestrian suit and the amusement that lit up his kind face. 

It was the amusement that immediately put David on edge. 

"Can I help you?" he asked, defensive and hating that it was so obvious. 

The man's eyebrows rose even higher, like he was finding this all very funny. "I have a meeting with Commander Schitt to go over some discrepancies in the Shatterdome's operating costs.

Alexis and David stole a glance at one another. So, maybe, when they'd been calculating their chances of ever coming up in front of the brass, they hadn't taken Roland Schitt into account. How the man had ever been a competent Jaeger pilot, no one was really sure. Maybe it helped that Jocelyn had always taken the right hemisphere... In any case, the fact that he'd been given authority over an entire Shatterdome was a mystery that no one was really up to solving, too busy thanking humanity's dwindling luck that he hadn't been stationed in Lima or Sydney or anywhere that really mattered. 

"Um," Alexis said, trying to buy time. "David, maybe you can show..."

"Patrick," he filled in helpfully. "Patrick Brewer."

"Right. Maybe you can show Patrick around while Stevie and I look for Roland?"

David was not on board with this plan, for any number of reasons, but judging by his sister's wide eyes and insistent look, he didn't have much choice in the matter. 

With a sigh, he stepped toward the door, already trying to figure out where they could go that would be out of the way enough to completely miss the mad scramble to distract Roland so someone else could take this budget meeting that would no doubt start as soon as he and this Patrick Brewer were out of earshot. 

"I don't suppose you've seen the cafeteria, yet?"

"I haven't seen anything," Patrick replied with a smile. 

There was still plenty of amusement lighting up his grin, but up close, where David could see the flecks of gold in Patrick's eyes and the bit of stubble he'd missed as he shaved, he suddenly found that he didn't mind it nearly so much. 

 

* * *

 

"So, is it typical for families to get posted to the same Shatterdome?"

David startled from his concentration, jolting upright fast enough to crick his neck. Which, he supposed, was what he got for working with his door open to the hall. Alexis would've made fun of him for trying to grow a hunch, Stevie would have laughed, and his mom or dad wouldn't have come by his quarters at all, so the expectant silence that greeted him was the only clue David needed to guess his intruder's identity: Patrick.

Finally turning in his desk chair to see that he was correct, David made a vague gesture that apparently counted as an invitation. Patrick came in and perched on the bunk, where he'd sat a hundred times before. 

As it turned out, Roland's spending idiosyncracies were not something that could be solved in just one meeting or without his involvement. Even for an MBA—"As it turns out, business school isn't the greatest investment with alien monsters intent on taking over the planet come around."—with a background in accounting, the Schitt's Creek finances were a formidable opponent.

It was an unfortunate fact of the apocalypse that not all branches of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps were created equal. Talent and resources were a finite supply and had to be doled out where it was most needed. The Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Shanghai Shatterdomes basked in the limelight of public adoration, and with good reason. Between their battalion of first-class Rangers with multiple kills under their belts and the actual population centers to protect, it only made sense that the funding and the fancy new tech and the research facilities (to say nothing of the competent leadership) were all funneled there.

All this to say, the Schitt's Creek Shatterdome was the redheaded step-child of the PPDC, and not for entirely unwarranted reasons.

After all, the Hudson Bay wasn’t exactly a hotbed of kaiju activity. No Kaiju had ever attacked north of Anchorage; presumably, the icy waters of the Northwest Passage were defense enough. And yet, Canada had to have its hand in the pot, and so, the Schitt's Creek Shatterdome and its singular Mark-2 Jaeger were cobbled together, along with a crew to run them.

It wasn't exactly a prestigious posting, and neither Rose really expected to ever get much action in Aurora Caesar, though it was nice that its shiny red-and-white paint job and all those little maple-leaf throwing stars were still pristine. 

And if they didn't see much action, then there was no reason to ever come face to face with anyone from the UN. It was only the heroic Rangers who got commendations (and the heroes' commanders who had to answer for all the damage a 2000 ton fighting robot and semi-aquatic alien caused). 

Unfortunately, it appeared the United Nations didn't get that memo. They'd made the mistake of thinking that a single budget specialist was equal to the task of deciphering Roland Schitt's bookkeeping and management style.

Good as Patrick was at his job, he was only human.

So, a few days had turned into weeks into months, and now Patrick's presence around the base had become as natural as everyone else's.

The fact that David still felt as off-kilter around him as he had that first day had nothing to do with familiarity. In fact, the more they got to know each other, the worse it got for David.

"Um," he replied, blinking and trying to parse out the question he'd only half heard. "A lot of Ranger teams come from the same family, so...?"

Patrick waved him off. "We might not know everything at the UN, but we've got plenty of stats on successful Rangers." Personally, David wasn't sure if he and Alexis could qualify as "successful" with zero confirmed kills and a 70% kill rate during test simulations, but he let Patrick go on. "I meant like your family's situation. Four adults all assigned to the same Shatterdome."

"Can we really say that my mother was assigned here, though?" he asked. If David squinted and tilted his head just right, Moira Rose's place to the Shatterdome's Civilian Council could be seen as a legitimate appointment. With clear vision, it was almost impossible not to call it a ploy to fill her time considering she'd refused to stay behind when Johnny accepted his PPDC-exclusive contract. Especially when the fact that a Civilian Council hadn't even existed before her arrival. 

Patrick grinned, and David had to bite down on his own. He leaned an elbow on the back of his chair, and suddenly felt like he was trying too hard to seem casual. Which, it had to be said, he definitely was. Patrick's smile only grew at the internal war playing out over David's expressive face. 

Not for the first time, he was struck with the desire to reach out and cup the Ranger's jaw, see if that calmed everything to stillness. Was that where it would end? If his hand would slide over David's cheek as he fell uncharacteristically silent, as he tugged him forward and their lips connected? Who could say?

Certainly not Patrick. 

"And dad only came here," David continued, oblivious to Patrick's thoughts, "because the PPDC was going to shut Rose Drift down entirely if he didn't stop selling J-Tech to the public. I think they figured it was better to keep him somewhere out of the way."

"Or maybe he wanted to be closer to Alexis and you."

"Ugh, I can't imagine why."

"I can."

David looked down at that, unwilling to acknowledge the spreading warmth in his chest and cheeks. When he peeked back up, Patrick was still looking at him, that same, tender smile on his face.

He kept smiling and watched as David struggled to accept the attention. Finally, Patrick was rewarded with a grin of his own, shy and reluctant, but a grin all the same. 

 

* * *

 

For the first time since it was first established, the alarm klaxons in the Schitt's Creek Shatterdome were blaring in earnest. Somehow, a kaiju had struck out from the Rift and managed to avoid detection as it swam north all the way to the Arctic. If it hadn't been for a fishing vessel in the Beaufort Sea—which, suffice to say, was operating in flagrant violation of the 2021 Pacific Fishing Ban—spotting the Category III as it came up for air, there was no telling how far into the Northwest Passage it would have gotten before the PPDC mobilized. After all, there was no guarantee that the myriad islands and channels and twists and turns would be as difficult for an alien amphibian to navigate as the hundreds of ships sunk in its waters. 

David tried not to panic as he made his way to the Drivesuit room. This eventuality was exactly what he and Alexis had trained for. It didn't matter that this would be the first time they'd be taking the Jaeger out for more than a few hours of defensive drills and tactical tests. He and his sister were about to be airlifted out to frigid waters that had been the death of so many before them to fight the kind of monster that existed in fairy tales. 

And that was fine. It was fine. Totally, completely  _fine_.

He was still trying to convince himself of this when he literally ran into a warm, firm body. Strong hands closed around his shoulders, holding him steady even as David's knees threatened to buckle. Whether that was the prospect of his first mission or the fact that the hands and body belonged to Patrick, he couldn't say for sure. 

For a civilian, Patrick looked appropriately terrified. His grip on David's shoulders tightened, drawing him forward half a step. If both men took comfort from the added proximity, it wasn't exactly the end of the world. (That was the giant fish monster currently swimming their way.)

"There you are!"

"I am here," David agreed, trying to find a non-cowardly way of wishing that he wasn't.

"I thought you might've—" Patrick cut himself off, his eyes roving desperately over David's face. He told himself he should let go of David, send him off to prepare, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. "I'm glad I found you."

David's head cocked to the side. It seemed like so often Patrick's words meant more than what they said. Over the past few months, there had been so many lingering looks and veiled comments, and now David was pretty sure he didn't want to keep ignoring them. He didn't want to keep ignoring the way his stomach fluttered when Patrick made a joke or talked to him in that soft, gentle tone. He didn't want to keep shying away from what he was pretty sure was true just because he'd had a few (okay, many) bad exes. 

Most of all, David didn't want to keep being scared. 

So, he reached up in the circle of Patrick's arms and cupped his cheek. Patrick's eyelashes flickered and he leaned into David's palm. Without letting himself think too hard about it, David took his cue and leaned in, pressing his lips to Patrick's in a quick, sweet kiss. 

Well, he meant it to be a quick, sweet kiss. 

The fact that Patrick's hands slid around to the back of David's neck and dragged him close, their bodies desperately pushing together as their mouths and tongues mimicked the action meant it was pretty hard to keep things quick or sweet. 

David reveled in Patrick's taste, in the solid press of his chest and the sturdiness of his thighs. Patrick couldn't get enough, his tongue caressing David's, eking out more, more, more, which David was more than happy to give.

"David Rose," came Roland Schitt's voice over the PA, loud enough to be heard over the alarms and the blissful haze of a good—great, amazing, _perfect_ —first kiss, "if you don't get your butt to the Drivesuit room, I swear I'm gonna—"

Patrick and David broke apart, only a little sheepish and only far enough to drag in a few breaths and steady their racing hearts, as the screech of feedback filled the hall. Jocelyn's cheerful voice followed. 

"Ignore Roland, David, but the J-Techs really do need to get you in the Conn-Pod sooner rather than later. Unless you want this Kaiju to make landfall and start heading for New York."

The PA system cut out, thought the klaxons continued to blare. Patrick and David didn't bother disengaging, even as they both knew they should. 

"Thank you," Patrick said, quiet and intimate, his forehead still pressed to David's. It was difficult for the both of them not to rock forward once more and kiss like the world was ending. They held out, but only because of the very real possibility that it might. "Because I was really worried that we'd never get to do that."

"No time like the present," David quipped weakly. 

"And the future. So make sure you come back."

He didn't bother to bite down on his smile this time around, instead, nodding eagerly and sealing the promise with another kiss.

 

* * *

 

By the time David joined Alexis in the Conn-Pod—a full five minutes after the Schitt's had gotten on the intercom to hurry him along—he slipped into the left-hand terminal as usual, thinking he'd mostly managed to get the wild, ecstatic, beaming smile on his face under control. 

Or, he thought he had, at least. 

As Stevie polished his helmet one last time, she frowned up at him, and then reached out with the rag for his face.

He reared back as far as he could, demanding, "What are you doing?"

"You've got something," she said, still reaching for him and ruthlessly wiping the corner of David's mouth clean. She raised an eyebrow. "Do I want to know if this is your spit or someone else's?"

"Ooh, Someone got a little frisky before the mission," Alexis enthused, looking far too pleased with the situation. "That's okay, Ted and I did, too. Did you know that he can—"

"Save it for the Drift, you two," Stevie advised to David's unending gratitude. She fitted his helmet into the rest of the Drivesuit and connected the spinal clamp. Before she left the pod, she squeezed David's hand, and he squeezed right back. 

Over the comms in his and Alexis' ears, he heard, "Initiating Neural Handshake in three... two... one."

The familiar and utterly foreign rush of thoughts and memories came bounding into David's consciousness, a tangled, sweeping knot of common experience. The Drift. 

"Connection stable. We're a go for launch."

Aurora Ceasar rumbled to life around them, through them, within them. It didn't matter what David felt about his prospects as a pilot, there really wasn't much better than the feeling of 2000 tons of steel and carbon and plasma rays at his command, even if his sister was half-responsible for that bit of magic.

A spike of fond exasperation came at him from the right. He sent it right back, and they sank into the easy holding pattern of the Drift as the Jumphawks hooked into the Jaeger and hauled it into the air.

 _David._ It didn't matter that it was just words in his head, he still heard the lilting sweep of her voice, the insistent note that said she'd keep pestering him until he acknowledged her.

 _What?_ he sent back, only half-irritated. It probably wasn't the right headspace for a Ranger heading into his first active mission, but David couldn't imagine Drifting with Alexis any other way.

_You and Patrick finally got it together, right? It wasn't someone else giving you a case of sloppy mouth?_

_My mouth is not—_  

_David._

He relented.  _Fine. Yes. Happy?_

 _Duh, David_.  

A rush of pure affection lit up the Drift, just in time for Aurora Caesar to plunge into icy, Arctic depths. Suddenly, David wasn't so worried about this mission or his and Alexis' track record in the simulator. They had each other's backs, in the Jaeger and out of it. 

If his certainty was colored by the promise of a man waiting for him back at the Shatterdome, with soft hands and softer lips, then that was just the way things were going to be. Even the end of the world had room for a little happiness.

David suspected that if he actually tried, there'd be even more room than that. 

Catching sight of something predatory and huge darting through the shadowy, murky water up ahead, he resolved that once he and Alexis got done kicking this kaiju's ass, he was definitely going to find out.

**Author's Note:**

> Did I chicken out of writing giant robots battling giant, amphibious aliens? Perhaps, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway!


End file.
